


Dans le fond des forêts votre image me suit

by Maisie_top_trash



Series: Unseen - Fear Will Lose [34]
Category: Twenty One Pilots
Genre: Drug Use, Grief/Mourning, Hallucinations, M/M, Schizoaffective Disorder, Self-Harm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-19
Updated: 2018-01-19
Packaged: 2019-03-06 22:04:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,774
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13420563
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Maisie_top_trash/pseuds/Maisie_top_trash
Summary: Unseen Fear Will Lose is a series of single chapter stories showing unseen scenes from the same universe as my main story, Fear Will Lose. In order to fully enjoy these extra bits, I recommend you go and read that first.Fear Will LoseEveryone says that Josh has left the country, that he ran away after Debby died and hasn't been back since. But Tyler knows differently, Tyler knows where he's hiding, Tyler knows where to find him.





	Dans le fond des forêts votre image me suit

**Author's Note:**

> Triggers: 
> 
> Self harm  
> Drug use  
> Alcoholism  
> Brief mentions of suicide  
> Brief mentions of death

The surface of his skin, a place where the heat of his sweat evaporated and immediately fell back down alongside the constant lashes of rain that exploded with a sting against his otherwise numb flesh. The rain was iced, the pellets sharp and fast moving and unending, and his blood was cold as it was forced along his tight constricting veins. A war between hot and cold was brewing, his chest felt cold, it always did, and the liquid pulsing through him at alarming speed was like a constant flow of chilled dread. The air bit at his dripping nose and ears, the sensation in his feet and fingers was long gone, and yet he felt far too hot for comfort.

Comfort was a foreign notion.

There was no way to track the passing of time in the depths of the forest once sun had gone down, but Tyler knew he’d been running for longer than he’d ever run before, that this time was worse than ever before, that the trees were more alien than ever before and that he’d never had to go that far before. And he couldn’t stop. The cloak of darkness that disguised the pattern of rocks and roots beneath his feet was thick enough to trip him every couple of rapidly sprinted strides, but he couldn’t stop. 

He didn’t know where he was running to, he just knew what he was running from. 

All the warning signs that they were coming had been and gone, Granny felt the storms in her knees and Tyler felt the rats in his chest and the mites in his skin, clawing their way out with the help of his nimble yet shaking fingers. The weather didn’t get to him anymore, the quivers were triggered by an overriding and overwhelming tsunami of terror that came hand in hand with the first scratch of the rats’ dirty claws against the bottom of the door. 

Even the darkness of the early hours of a winter night wasn’t enough to dispel them, they chased him, they smelt him, they were hunting him, and they were never going to give up. Part of him wanted to make the job of the demon possessed creatures easier, be the one to fold, to sink to his knees on the swollen muddy forest floor and allow them to rip and tear into his body until he became nothing but a hearty meal for a dozen black cat-sized rats. But he couldn’t, he couldn’t, especially when he knew what could potentially be laying ahead of him, who could potentially be laying ahead of him.

Every time he entered the forest, he was fleeing. Sometimes during the day, he went back and tried to explore, to track down the place he’d been the night before and find the boy who hid away in the shadows, but something about his crossing of the boundary of the woods was like a call to battle and, as quick as a flash, the rats appeared, and the chase was on. A calm search was impossible, instead his only option was to run for his life and hope the stars aligned and sent the demented beasts in one direction and showed him the way to his salvation. 

The sky was filled with no stars that night, just dark smothering clouds purging their burdens. 

A sudden squawking sound from above caused his head to whip up only to quickly snap back down, needing to concentrate on the weaving route he had no choice but to take. The crows had joined the rats. The mob was growing.

“TYLER!” A distant voice cried out desperately, the strain dragging each syllable out to beyond its limit until it was ripped from the air by a gush of howling wind. At that point Tyler realised he was sobbing, and no matter how hard he tried to locate the scream’s whereabouts, it had long been absorbed by the engulfing emptiness that coated everything around him, lost forever. But that wasn’t good enough, it simply wasn’t good enough to give up, he had to find him, he had to find him.

“JOSH!” He screeched through his wails, knowing his hyperventilating attempt wasn’t good enough to survive above the roar of the weather, nothing he did was good enough. 

Overwhelmed and exhausted, Tyler’s screaming legs refused to lift high enough to protect him from the impending attack and the stumbles became more and more frequent until eventually he tripped over the winding gnarled root of a twisting and towering black oak tree, looming above him as he wept. The scrapes on his palms were excruciating, and as he turned to look at them, kneeling in the soggy undergrowth, all he saw was blood. Blood, deep, dark, blood running down his arms and pooling in his hands, dripping off his fingers and washing away with the rain. Then suddenly the source of the pain revealed itself to him, and he noticed for the first time the dozens of lacerations that ran up his wrists for as far as he could see.

“Mr Joseph!”

Again, Tyler frantically searched for where the echo was first established, head twisting sharply, but to no avail. Just as he was about to hide his swollen eyes behind his bloody palms and fold in on himself in despair, a bright white light flashed across his vision between blinks. It was no torch, no stray headlight, no, n-no identifiable cause at all – just his mind playing tricks. It had to be a trick, there was no light in the darkness of night.

“Mr Joseph, you need to stay away from the door! Stay back! Okay?!”

The demands of the woods were confusing him, Josh was confusing him, Josh, J-Josh didn’t sound like that, and he knew he’d been bad recently and not visited his boyfriend’s hidden hideaway but that didn’t mean he’d forgotten what his saviour’s voice felt like in his soul. Josh was smooth, Josh was serene, Josh was solace. Josh was what he needed.

“JOSH!”  
“Mr Joseph you need to stay back, we’re breaking the door down.”

Suddenly the mites burrowing in his skin came to life and their active burrowing was excruciating enough to trigger him to start scraping away at his biceps with dirty fingernails, he had to get them out, he had to get them out!

Another flash of white.

Blink.

Back to the forest.

Blink.

Another flash of white.

Blink.

The white remained.

With a series of more furious blinks, slowly Tyler’s eyes acclimatised to reveal the new scenario surrounding him, but the focussing of his vision did nothing to clarify the situation. Momentarily he tore his hands from their job of scratching away at his arms, and instead rubbed his eyes, trying to understand exactly what was going on, but failing miserably.

The woods were gone, the trees were gone, the mud was gone, the wind and the rats and the crows were gone. It was all gone. What remained was his mother’s en-suite bathroom, smashed to smithereens and splattered with blood and whiskey, shower running at full pelt and pounding against the glass door endlessly. Maybe the rain wasn’t gone. His hair and his clothes were wet. Shower or rain? Rain or shower?

More blood dripped off his fingers and splashed onto the floor, which was covered in shards of a Jack Daniel’s bottle and the mirror that had been broken by something or someone. Through a slither of a shard, Tyler could just about make out his wearied reflection, beard thick, shadows dark, bruises prominent. Eyes glaring. 

There was no time to stare down the stranger in the glass, because he jumped suddenly when a large thumping sound came from the other side of the small rectangular room, and he saw the white wooden door splintering against a chest of drawers that someone had moved across it as a barricade. And once he’d tuned into that noise, he tuned into all of the shouts and screams of whatever horde was trying to gain entry to the strange place in the midst of the forest in the middle of a winter’s night.

“One or two more swings Mr Joseph and we’ll be in.” A stranger shouted, and Tyler, spooked, rushed across the floor, not caring about the glass in his feet, and hid in the ceramic basin of the roaring shower. Water ran down his face and body, making him shiver even more, but he tried to stop his sobs in hope of remaining undetected by the descending swarm.

With a huge crash, the door barged open a centimetre or so, only to collide with the heavy drawers with yet another thud that sent Tyler’s panicky heart off at lightning speed. He watched through blurred squinty vision as a pair of hands slipped through the gap and started pushing it out of the way, but as more and more of the person slid in, Tyler had to squeeze his eyes closed out of fear of being seen. He couldn’t be captured, not again.

“Mr Joseph, my name’s Officer Walker, I’m a police officer – don’t worry son, you’re not in trouble, I’m here to help, I just need to know whether you’re in possession of an offensive weapon.” The voice sounded close, and Tyler wished he was back in the forest, wished he was still running, wished he could escape rather than cower in the corner of the shower, begging the tiled wall to swallow him up from whatever Hell he was trapped in.

“Can we get a paramedic in here? Urgently.”

 

 

Tyler woke up with a gasp. Yet another unfamiliar location. This time, sterile.

He found himself tucked into a large yet uncomfortable bed, a thin sheet in place of a duvet, no pillow, yet again no comfort. The walls were white and plain, the smell was one of disinfectant, and the only sounds were a regular and predictable beeping alongside the quiet stifled tears of another. His mother, of course.

Upon reflection, he realised he knew the room well, he’d woken up there several times of late, he was in the hospital.

Shit.

“Tyler, Tyler no,” a deep male voice warned as he started tugging at the wires and tubes covering him, succeeding with the one attached to his finger but struggling with the other imbedded in his arm but hidden under a thick and tight bandage. In fact, bandages covered the entirety of both arms and he took to unwinding them as fast as possible.

“Tyler stop it right now.” The man, Dad, ordered but was ignored.  
“Ty baby, the doctors will come in and they’ll tie you down if they seeing you doing that, please baby, please.” The woman, Mom, spoke up too and was also ignored.  
“Tyler. Enough.”  
“I have to go.” Tyler hurriedly murmured as a second thought whilst trying to climb off the bed, hands still busy with the bandages.  
“No son, you don’t, stay where you are.”  
“Got to go.”  
“Sit down.” Dad insisted with strong hands that grasped Tyler’s shoulders tightly and forced him back on the bed, but he had either forgotten or didn’t care that touch was lethal, and the overwhelming spike of anxiety made Tyler cry out.

“Chris, be careful with him.”  
“Well what do you want me to do Kelly? Just let him run off?! Again?!”  
“I have to go!” Tyler interrupted the bickering pair urgently, standing up again, but was instantly met with a hand on his chest, pushing him back down again.  
“Sit.”  
“I have to go,”  
“Baby, listen to your father, get in bed for me.”  
“I have to go!”  
“Tyler, we can go home when the doctor says so, but right now you need to be monitored.”  
“You, y-you, you people, you don’t understand, I have to go, I, I have to go,” Tyler’s feet found the floor again, his painful, cut, feet, and he tried to force his way towards the door, but his dad acted as a barrier whilst his mom cried on the seat in the corner.

“I have to go,” he murmured again.  
“Why? Where are you going?” Dad asked.  
“Back to the forest,”  
“The forest? What forest?”  
“The one from last night, I, I, I-I have to go, I have to meet someone there,”  
“Baby there’s no forest,” Mom gulped tearfully.  
“Last night you were at home,” his adversary lied. “You went for a shower and you locked the door Tyler, remember what we told you? Don’t lock the door. You’re not allowed to lock the door. Stop locking the door.”  
“Chris, now’s not the time, it doesn’t matter,”  
“Yes, it does Kel! Look at the state of him!”  
“It doesn’t! The police smashed the door beyond repair, we’re gonna have to replace it anyway, we’ll just get one without a lock. It really doesn’t matter at this point, please, just make him get back in bed.”  
“What do you think I’m trying to do?!”

“I have to go,” Tyler wasn’t phased by the tension and kept insisting the same thing over and over, hoping it would sink in. In spite of the pain from the soles of his feet, he was fairly confident that he’d be able to outrun his parents and the doctors and the nurses and the rats and the crows this time, that he’d make it to the special spot in the forest where Josh called home, all he had to do was get around his dad without making any contact. Physical contact was lethal after all.

“Mr Joseph Mr Joseph, please, back in bed, you’ve suffered some substantial injuries, you shouldn’t be up.” A doctor with a white coat, clipboard and a suspicious glint in his eyes rushed into the small private room.  
“We’ve tried, he’s not listening.”  
“Mr Joseph, my name’s Dr Menzel, I’m here to look after you and what I need from you right now is compliance, okay?”  
“I have to go,”  
“Busy man hey?” Dr Menzel put down the board and smiled, a dishonest smile. “Trust me, I know the feeling,”  
“I, I have to go,”  
“Listen to me a sec buddy, you’ve got a choice here, it’s up to you, I’m not gonna make it for you, but just hear me out. Option 1, you hop back on that bed for me voluntarily, and I redress your wounds, and we calmly have a discussion about the next step for you. Or alternatively, option 2, you attempt to make a run for it and the hospital’s security tackle you, drag you back here, restrain you with the use of belts around your wrists and ankles, and you’ll be legally required to stay here for 72 hours-“  
“No,” Tyler shook his head warily.  
“Don’t like the sounds of that one hey?”  
“I have to go!”  
“What’s it gonna be pal, bed? Or restraints?”  
“I HAVE TO GO!” He screamed out, furious nobody was listening to him.  
“Tyler Robert Joseph, so help me God, I will restrain you myself if you don’t get in that bed RIGHT THIS INSTANCE!” Mom screamed back.

Mom didn’t scream very often, not like that anyway, sometimes, sometimes Tyler could picture her screaming in horror at some of the things he did, but, but she didn’t shout at him. And it wasn’t enough to make him give up on his pursuit of leaving, but it did make him hesitate for a moment, and his dad exploited his brief pause by shoving him onto the mattress forcefully.

“CHRIS!”  
“WHAT?!”  
“Guys, guys, calm, he’s in bed, that’s what counts.”  
“I want to go h-h-ho-ome,” Tyler started sobbing into his palms, hiding his face.  
“Baby baby, baby Momma’s so sorry, we’re sorry, we’ll go home really really soon I promise, just keep being brave for just a little while longer,” Mom’s voice went soft and tearful again, but Tyler could barely hear her over his own hysterics in combination with the screaming in the back left of his brain. The mites were starting to itch too.

“Tyler I know you’re a tad upset right now, but I’ve got a few important thing I need to discuss with your parents, so can you hang on a few ticks whilst we do that?”  
“I’m not leaving him when he’s like this, if you need to talk then talk.”  
“I feel this is the sort of conversation we should be having in my office.” Dr Menzel told her.  
“And I feel I should be comforting my sobbing son, but instead I’m talking to you, so I suggest that if you have something to say, you say it sharpish.”  
“There’s no need to be hostile Mrs Joseph.”  
“And there’s no need to be insensitive either, forgive us if our main priority is the state of our child and not our location.” Dad sighed bitterly, and Tyler could just about make out him joining her on the chair. It meant all three were now preoccupied, it meant the route to the door and to freedom was clear, but suddenly Tyler felt too scared to move a fraction, terrified of what could be lurking in store for him.

“Fine. Here it is then.” The doctor sighed and Tyler squeezed his eyes closed tightly and curled in on himself. “From the results of Tyler’s blood tests, it’s clear to me that he’s currently abusing opioids, morphine.”  
“You gave him morphine for the pain when he got admitted.”  
“No Mr Joseph, we gave him paracetamol. This opioid was definitely in his system before he arrived.”  
“So??”  
“So I’ve seen from his medical history that he’s been prescribed Suboxone in the past for withdrawals, it’s obvious he’s fighting a drug addiction, it’s obvious he’s not in recovery, what’s not obvious is why you haven’t put him in rehab yet.”  
“Don’t speak to us like that.” His dad growled, and Tyler wished he was back in the forest, away, away from the arguing and the anger and the sadness, away from it all except Josh. He wanted Josh. 

“With bad trips such as this an almost weekly occurrence from the looks of his notes, I see no logical argument as to why you wouldn’t admit him.”  
“This isn’t a trip, he didn’t trip last night,” Mom sniffed and Tyler bit down hard on his bottom lip. “He’s just, he, he struggles, he, um he, he finds it hard, to um, to, to cope with th-things. His best friend died, and his boyfriend left him on the same day, and he, he, eugh, he just can’t quite wrap his head around it all.”  
“He’s trying his best.”  
“Yeah,” The parents agreed, a usual occurrence recently. “This, t-this issue, it’s, it’s grief, not drugs, and you don’t go to rehab for grief.”

The mentioning of Debby and Josh coincided with the familiar sound of the scratchy claws of the rats racing down the hall. Tyler tried his best not to scream, not wanting to attract their attention, but he couldn’t put a halt to his sobs.

“I spoke to the paramedics who collected your son; it’s my understanding that he was mid-hallucination.”  
“He’s been having episodes since he was 17, it predates the drugs.”  
“So you admit you’re aware of his drug issue Mr Joseph?”  
“Of course I am! What do you expect us to do as parents? Keep him locked up under supervision 24 hours a day? Trust us, we try to keep him in, keep him away from those dealers, but if it comes to physical confrontation, which it does every single day, then we’re no match for him. He’s 19, he’s fit and incredibly desperate. The damage he could potentially cause us is extraordinary, so no, we won’t keep him caged up like an animal in our own home.”

“And we’ve tried so hard to help him off the morphine, he managed nearly 48 hours at the beginning of this month, but my god, the withdrawal, it was like he was dying right in front of my eyes.” Mom added, and Tyler wished he was dead.  
“That’s what the Suboxone’s for.”  
“He wouldn’t take it. Refused. Spat it out.” She cried.  
“And I suppose you expect us to hide it in his food? Like they do with the animals in the zoos? Doctor, with all due respect, my son is a mentally ill drug abuser, but he is my son, and he is a person, and if you have nothing but the offer of rehab then I’d very much like to get the paperwork for his discharge arranged.” 

 

 

“Welcome home.” Zack didn’t make eye contact as they crossed paths in the hall upstairs, and Tyler said nothing, hungry to return to his room, but Mom had other ideas.  
“That’s nice of your brother, isn’t it Ty? Why don’t you say thank you in return?”  
“Don’t bother trying, you know he won’t.” The younger sighed and carried on towards the stairs whilst Tyler scratched away at the bugs burrowing in his collar bone.  
“Gonna prove him wrong baby? Say hello?” Mom asked softly, but Tyler just walked away, needing to get to his possessions more than he needed to appease his mother or brother.

The wounds on his feet were irritated by the steps he took to move from the car on the drive up to his personal cell, and he could feel them seeping onto the dressings that surrounded his shredded skin. He knew he should tell someone, but he wouldn’t. He never did. 

“Are you going to try and get some sleep love?” She followed him and saw the way he grabbed his pillow, thrusting a bandaged hand in its case, but caught the wrong end of the stick. “I’ll let people know that we need a quiet house, so you can get some rest in, and I can read you a story if you’d like?”  
“I, I’ve, I’ve got to go,”  
“Go where Ty?”  
“Out.” He pulled his wallet from the cushion and dropped it back on his bed, quickly checking the contents of the worn leather wallet before sliding it into his kangaroo pouch and turning to go back out of the room. There was a little over a hundred bucks in notes and a handful of change, but he didn’t care about the money, he only needed the polaroid which was tucked in the middle pocket. He needed it close to him, needed physical evidence of Josh and his relationship on him at all times in order to remind himself of what they could get back to if only they worked together. Admittedly his boyfriend’s insistence of living in the woods was complicating things, but they could overcome anything, Tyler was sure of it. 

“Out where baby?” Mom tried to remain calm, but she moved quickly to keep up with him and there was an urgency to her tone that gave away the facade.  
“I have to meet someone,”  
“A meeting? With, w-with your um, your dealer?”  
“I’m late,”  
“Tyler, you don’t need to lie to Momma, you know that right? Just a simple yes or no, is it a drug deal?”  
“He won’t be happy if I’m late.”  
“Okay, I’ll drive you?”

That caught his attention, causing him to freeze momentarily. A ride would be helpful, the pain was close to intolerable and would no doubt worsen after a long walk, and the winter weather was hideous, and Josh didn’t like to be kept waiting. Maybe, just maybe, a lift wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world. 

“What?”  
“I’ll drive you to your meet up.”  
“You will?”  
“Of course I will baby, I, I hope you know, although I don’t support your use of drugs, I do support you. And I want you to be safe. Although I don’t feel comfortable with the idea of drugs, I feel even more uncomfortable with the idea of you being alone with drugs. So I’ll come to your meeting with this guy, and I’ll be with you whilst you shoot up, or snort, or whatever it is that you do, and then I’ll stay with you to make sure that things went okay.” Her voice was shaking. “I know it’s been a while since you last had a hit, so I’m guessing you need one pretty soon,”  
“We have to go.”  
“Okay, okay, do I have time to quickly explain to Dad where-“  
“We have to go.”  
“Alright we’ll go. Have you got everything? Enough money?”

He didn’t justify that with a response, in fact, it was hardly worth mentioning that he had 4 30mg pills in his wallet that he could crush and snort right there right then. The interactions with the dealer he used were horrible, all interactions were horrible, far too much physical contact, so Tyler liked to bulk buy in order to keep the meetings few and far between. He’d unfortunately need another hook up in the next few days, but not right then. However Mom didn’t need to know that. 

“Who’s that?” Dad called from the kitchen as the pair opened the front door.  
“I’m just taking Tyler to the store, he’d like some comfort food, won’t be long!” Mom called back and closed the door behind them before her husband could say anything else. Instead the mother and son climbed into the car in complete silence. 

“Where is this meet up?” She turned the engine on, but he said nothing. “Ty? Poppet, I know you’ve had a rough 24 hours, but I can’t help you sort yourself out if you don’t tell me where this guy is.”  
“Go towards Flint Road,” he whispered.  
“Put your seatbelt on for me quickly and we’ll head off.”

The consequence of having tiny little insects under his skin was that he didn’t have very much fresh skin left at all. The majority of his reachable body was scratched away until the mites moved on, and left behind large patches of pale shallow scab. It wasn’t painful, especially not in comparison to the stitched cuts that also covered his body, but it did mean that t-shirts caught on him and seatbelts were annoying. Besides, he hardly cared about safety. 

“Fine.” She sighed and pulled off the drive. “But I’d much prefer you sat in the back if you’re going to insist on not wearing one, so bear that in mind for the journey back please.”

Tyler wanted to rest his head against the window, but knew the vibrations would be too painful against his rather large collection of bruises. He didn’t remember how he’d got the majority of them, but banging his head against a wall did seem vaguely familiar through the fog of missing time. 

“Tyler, why are you itching? Why are you always itching?” Her voice was attempting to be gentle but didn’t mask her concern. “Mrs Robinson’s boy used to scratch like you do, back when he was on heroin, but he went to the centre downtown Ty and now he’s doing really well, he’s got a job down at Walmart and everything.”

Tyler knew he was still using. They shared the same dealer. 

“You’ll have to excuse my ignorance, but morphine, does that make you feel itchy too? Is it an opioid thing? Is that why you scratch?”  
“No,”  
“Why then baby? Because you do it nearly all the time, see, you’re doing it now,” she glanced across before making a left turn.  
“Bugs.”  
“Huh?”  
“Bugs.” He whispered no louder.  
“Bugs? What do you mean baby? Bed bugs? I can treat your sheets for you if that’s the case.”  
“In my skin.”  
“Tyler sweetheart I can’t understand what you’re saying.”

Understanding things was overrated. Tyler could never understand things anymore. 

“Tyler, whatever’s going on, can you promise me one thing?” Mom asked, taking the third exit on the junction. “Baby?”  
“Hmm.”  
“Promise me you’ll stay away from heroin?” Her voice was shaking a little. “I mean I want you off the morphine too, obviously, but if you need to take a while to wean then I’ll be patient and do my best to help you out with everything and drive you to these deals and whatever else you need, but in return, just, please Tyler, please, stay away from heroin.”

He’d never used heroin. He probably wouldn’t. He didn’t like drugs. The morphine just numbed things a little, and he had needed it back when Josh was away, but now that Josh was back, he’d stop using. Maybe. Other things still needed to be numb so that he could focus on his grieving boyfriend. 

“Promise me baby? Please.”  
“I need a drink.” He mumbled.  
“There’s some water in the glove box, but darling, answer my request?”  
“Not water. A drink.”  
“Oh, uh, uh, okay, we’ll um, we’ll swing by a store on the way back poppet.” She changed gear and he flinched away from her hand. “We’ll be late to your meet up, remember? You, you said he’d be mad if you’re late. But I promise we’ll go straight to a liquor store afterwards.”

Raising his voice loud enough for it to escape the confines of his skull was draining, and he needed to save his energy. 

“You’re my boy, Ty, you’re my little boy, and I know you’re 19 now and so tall and so handsome, but you’re still my little boy.” He could tell she was tearing up without needing to look in her direction. “And I know you’ve had your heart broken, had it stomped on, but this doesn’t need to be how things are forever. You, y-you don’t have to carry on down this road, the drinking and the drugs and the, the cutting; we can fix this, there’s still time baby.”

They were getting close to the forest. 

“What the doctor was saying this morning, you know, he was harsh but maybe he had the right idea? I know that rehab won’t bring Josh or Debby back, it’s not going to take the heartache away, but maybe by removing the morphine and the alcohol from the equation, things might seem a bit more hopeful? I’m aware that things aren’t ever easy, especially for you Ty, but this could help?”

“I looked online, morphine withdrawal is a little over a week, we could check you in for two weeks and then-“  
“Turn right.”  
“Okay, but yeah, we could check you in for two weeks and get you clean, then see what we can do about these episodes you keep having. Because they’re getting worse Ty.”  
“Pull over here.”  
“Here? You meet him here?” She looked around at the fairly nice houses whilst coming to a stop. 

“Round the corner. I’ll walk.”  
“Do you want me to come?”  
“No.”  
“Oh, okay.” The handbrake was pulled and a sigh was released. 

“Just let me finish quickly?” It wasn’t really a question, so Tyler remained in his seat, scratching away at the mites. “The episodes. Last night, you, y-you were completely unreachable baby, you were completely immersed, and you were petrified. I could hear you screaming and smashing things from all the way down in the garage. And you didn’t stop screaming until they sedated you in the ambulance.”

He couldn’t remember what he had supposedly smashed, and the ambulance was a blur too, but he was far beyond the point of caring enough to ask for clarity. 

“Baby, there, th-th,” She stammered then took a sharp breath in whilst he stared out the window at the sidewalk. “There was a moment when I thought to myself, okay Kelly, tonight’s gonna be the night, the night when he finally goes too far, finally, um, um, y-you know.”  
“Kills himself.” He yawned, finding the words she couldn’t.  
“Yes, a-and, well, I just need you to know that I love you Tyler.”

Still he didn’t look her way, but from the edge of his peripheral vision he could just about make out her wiping her tears with a tissue that had emerged from some unknown location, maybe a pocket, maybe a sleeve, maybe a door compartment. Hmm, he tried to remember any other clues, did she have it before they got back in the car? Did she have it in the house?

“I love you baby, so much, and I’ll do anything to help you, literally anything. So if you ever think of anything that would help, anything, even just a cuddle and a cry, then Mommy’s here baby. Mommy’s here.”

Tyler decided it must have been on her person, she’d definitely used lots of tissues in the hospital and must have taken one with her on the way out. They’d been side by side at home and he would have noticed if she got one out of the box in the hall. 

“Was your tissue up your sleeve or in your pocket?” His voice was deep yet quiet.  
“My what? My tissue? Please Ty, please, try to concentrate.”  
“I have to go.” He realised the time and opened the door and started climbing out.  
“Sweetheart, I wasn’t finished.”  
“I have to go.”  
“Right, okay, well, um, well I love you Tyler, and uh, and remember what we agreed? Stay clear of heroin and don’t take anything without me there.”  
“I didn’t agree to anything.” Tyler closed the passenger door after him and instantly began walking away. He half expected his mom to chase after him, shelling out her limited knowledge from health classes 30 years ago and telling him to be back in 10 minutes max. 

He wouldn’t go back. 

 

 

The suburbs of Columbus were comfortably close to the edge of the forest, but only when Tyler’s feet weren’t in bloody tatters. He was convinced there were still a few shards of glass remaining in some of the wounds and each step only hurt increasingly more as he got closer. Of course his will to find Josh drove him forwards, and, to a certain degree, his enjoyment of the punishment, but eventually he decided enough was enough and sat down on a bench at a bus stop far away enough from where Mom had dropped him that she wouldn’t be able to find him easily. 

He had no intentions of catching a bus, they were filthy noisy dangerous things, but he needed a moment to gather himself and come up with a solution. The chances that the rats were following him at a distance was very high, he’d no doubt need to start running soon, and the likelihood of his abused flesh enduring the thuds was next to none. 

After a few seconds of steadying breaths, Tyler found an answer. Thick bandages were wrapped round his arms needlessly, and it only took a few attempts to pick the strips of fastening tape off and start unwinding the first reel of white fabric. 

Sometimes he cut himself on purpose. Sometimes he felt afraid, and lost, and lonely, and yet numb, and hollow, and empty. Sometimes he wanted to feel the sharp pain of stainless steel first breaking the skin then burying deep deep down into him, reminding him what it was to feel something. Sometimes he just liked to watch the red clash with the white of the bathroom tiles. Sometimes, in fact most of the time recently, he didn’t remember making the incisions. 

He didn’t remember these ones. 

Taking the time to count how many there were seemed like an unwise decision, not wanting to waste a single moment, but still Tyler chose to rip off the white dressings which had been hidden under the bandages. He folded each blood stained square in four, then peered down at the rows upon rows upon rows of swollen stitched lines. 

Sometimes he marvelled at his body’s ability to heal. 

Sometimes he prayed his body would stop fighting so damn hard to survive. 

Once he had repeated the process with his other arm, he scooped up the bloody gauzes and threw them in the trashcan on the other side of the bus shelter. Knowing a little about biological waste and the potential for nasty germs, he made sure to pull his lighter out and run it along a newspaper that was also thrown in there. Once it caught alight, he returned to his bandages and left it to burn away with fleeting yellow flames. 

He wished he had a pack of smokes on him. Instead he had to make do with quickly burning a shiny pink mark onto the side of his hand to make the voice in the back left of his brain be a little quieter.

Next on the list was removing his shoes, which was easy said than done. The seeping blood had not only stuck his feet to his socks, but also his socks to the insides of his trashed sneakers. Eventually he managed to ease his way out of the pair, only to reveal his previously white socks had turned crimson. 

Tyler decided not to disturb the copious lesions any further, and instead took to wrapping one of the bandages around his ankle a few times to anchor it then under the painful arch and in a continuing back and forth figure of 8 until only a few centimetres remained, which he tucked into the elasticated cuff of his otherwise ruined sock. 

It wasn’t perfect, but it would do. 

His hands had started to shake by the time he started on the second foot. Sometimes they did that because he needed a hit, sometimes it was because he’d forgotten to eat for a few days, sometimes the fear of the ever present rats got to him, but not this time, this time he was excited. He was going to find Josh. 

Even the mention of his lover’s name in Tyler’s internal monologue was enough to power him through the pain involved with squeezing his shoes back on. The tight additional padding made his toes pulse, but it did mean he was able to stand up again without feeling like he was walking on razor blades. 

He started walking back down the street towards the forest, waltzing along the central white line opposed to taking the sidewalk. The pain was still beating like a background drum, ever present, but tolerable. And because it had progressed to tolerable, Tyler decided to start jogging. 

The rats were lagging at that point, he couldn’t hear their scratching, and even the mites had settled a little, meaning he could pump forwards with both hands rather than keeping one scratch scratch scratching away. 

The jog turned to a sprint. 

He could feel his feet literally ripping, the stretched skin tearing, the blood leaking, but he didn’t care. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered. Nothing would ever or could ever matter more than Josh. 

He had to get to Josh quicker. 

5 months without his boyfriend, 5 months alone, 5 months of hatred and hopelessness and hysteria. 5 months of his dad telling him to forget about Josh, 5 months of his mom telling him to not get his hopes up, 5 months of everyone telling him he’d never come back. 5 months of patience paid off. He’d stayed strong, stayed true to his beliefs, stayed loyal and trusting in Josh, all worth it, just for their brief moments together in the dark forest. 

Cars honked their horns at him and a random pedestrian called him an idiot as he sprinted down the street, but he didn’t care because every stride was carrying him closer and closer to Josh. Nothing could get him down because he was a man possessed, a man hopelessly in love. 

He was in love, and he didn’t care who knew! If he had a moment to spare then he’d stop to sing it from the roof tops, he didn’t care who heard, he was in love! Even as he raced onwards, his heart sang and the corners of his cracked lips turned up in a twisted smile, revealing his unbrushed teeth. The wind quickly dried out his gums but he didn’t care, he couldn’t stop smiling, not when he was so close. 

The route was deeply ingrained in his brain and he instinctively veered off the street, narrowly avoiding a passing car, and took a small back passage for a short while before dipping down a discreet footpath that lead towards the actual forest. 

He’d stumbled upon the large expanse of woodland whilst going for a walk following a panic attack not too long ago, and instantly found its beauty soothing. The first few trips were magnificent, however on his fourth or fifth, he’d left a scent that the rats had picked up, and hadn’t stopped chasing since. But that didn’t matter, because not long afterwards he was finally reunited with Josh in the depths of the natural landscape. 

The first time they set eyes on each other since Debby’s death, Tyler had punched him. It wasn’t a very good punch, back then he didn’t have much experience with fighting, but it landed on Josh’s cheekbone nevertheless and swelled up sharpish whilst passing on the message that what he had done was not okay. It was not okay. He never should’ve run off and left Tyler to deal with the funeral and the shit storm that followed afterwards by himself. But once they got that out of the way, it was so easy for Tyler to slide right back into being desperately in love. 

So many times he’d begged for Josh to leave the forest with him, to face the streets of Columbus for even a fleeting moment. Every time Josh said no. He used the excuse that everything reminded him of Debby, that it was painful, that it was triggering, but Tyler knew the truth. 

Josh was scared of people thinking he was weak.

Everyone knew he’d run away and left him alone, everyone knew he shouldn’t have, the whole town was constantly talking about them, constantly asking about them, constantly thinking about them. Constantly. They’d been the ultimate power couple, the most important couple in all of Columbus, nay, Ohio, nay, the entire country! They were the nation’s sweethearts, and everybody knew it and loved them and cared about them, and all that pressure, all that importance, it had got to Josh.

Tyler was a considerate boyfriend though, he didn’t mind making the trek. He knew one-day Josh would repay him somehow.

Finally, he reached the end of the muddy track and arrived at the depths of the forest, stopping to take some deep gasps of fresh air with his hands on his head. After a few seconds, he dropped down onto his knees on the soft undergrowth, and pulled his wallet out of his back pocket, struggling to keep hold of it between his sweaty shaking palms. He quickly scrambled to open the middle pocket, ignoring the polaroid whilst pulling out a small plastic pouch with 4 pills in it, 3 of which he shook out and put back into the zipped pocket, whilst sealing the little bag back up again.

Using the butt of his lighter, Tyler smashed the remaining pill up into smaller chunks against a fallen branch not too far out of reach. Once the little chunks were small enough, he tried to steady himself whilst taking out an old credit card and carefully poured the contents onto the flat back of it. The last step was to take an old razor blade from the wallet and use it to chop the powder as fine as possible. He didn’t have time to be a perfectionist, but practice meant he didn’t spill any, and it only took a few seconds to arrange it into a line and snort it with a finger covering his other nostril.

There was no time to relish in the buzz, he just snorted again to try and pick up any residual powder, then stood back up clumsily, feet screaming, and put his wallet away. A grin appeared yet again as he realized the rats were far off, maybe even off his scent completely, and he was so incredibly close to Josh.

Filled with confidence, Tyler laughed at the pathetic attempts of the animals to dictate his life, they were pathetic and had no hold over him! In fact he was so confident that he took a moment out of his busy schedule to taunt them, to show he wasn’t afraid, to show who was in charge. With the razor blade still in his right hand, Tyler held out his left then drew a deep red line into his palm, hissing a little at the pain, but then laughing joyfully when the first drop landed on the ground below him. 

If the rats couldn’t track him now, then they were even dumber than he thought.

“COOOOMMMMEEE AND FIIIIINND MEEEEEE!” He cried out, proudly jeering them on through his laughter.

He took a moment to enjoy himself, then decided to properly initiate the chase again and started running towards a red fleck in the distance that he was absolutely certain belonged to Josh’s Mohican, laughing as he ran.

 

 

 

Tyler woke up with a gasp. Yet another unfamiliar location. This time, sterile.

“Baby, baby shh, shhhh,” a soothing hushing sound leaked out of his mother’s mouth as he slowly absorbed his surroundings, and realised with a flush of internal anger that he was back in the hospital. Again.

“Darling no, calm down, settle, settle,” he felt her squeeze his hand as he tried to get up, but was too weak to do so. It was as though a heavy weight was pressing down on his chest, limiting his breaths and pinning him to the bed. His blinks were slow, his throat felt dry and sore, and a strange fog was stealing his thoughts away from him.

“Good boy, that’s it, just relax. You’ve had surgery Ty, a dog walker found you in the woods with a really nasty cut on your leg and so the doctors had to do a little operation to fix it up for you, but there’s no need to worry, okay? You’re safe now. Momma’s here baby.”  
“Josh,” he managed to croak.  
“Oh baby, I miss him too, I know it’s hard, so impossibly hard, but he needs more time. Everything with Debby, it was just, it was too much for him to cope with all at once. But I know he’ll come home when he’s ready, and we’ll be waiting for him with open arms, yeah?”  
“Josh, come here,” he pleaded with the redhead leaning against the opposite wall of the small hospital room, but he just sighed and walked out, leaving Tyler to sob hysterically.

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry it's been so long guys, getting out of bed is a struggle right now, let alone writing and posting and replying to comments etc. I'm really sorry <3  
> I'm still hospitalised and things are still really shitty, and I'm not quite sure what the future will hold  
> i love you all  
> Maisie


End file.
